


A Bad Start to A Bad End

by K_Popsicle



Category: Batman (Movies 1989-1997)
Genre: Angst, Batman Forever, Canon Compliant, Consent, Dark, First Meetings, Implied Sexual Content, Light BDSM, M/M, Mental Instability, Party, Pre-Canon, Pre-Movie, Undefined Relationship Boundries, Unhealthy Relationships, University, anger issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-02 08:23:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21158588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/K_Popsicle/pseuds/K_Popsicle
Summary: Before Harvey Dent became Two Face and before Bruce Wayne became Batman they both meet at university.





	A Bad Start to A Bad End

**Author's Note:**

  * For [simplecoffee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplecoffee/gifts).

“You coming, Dent?” One of the boys call from the hall. There are a few boys in the corridor behind him frantically getting ready for a night out. Harvey brush’s down his button down shirt and slicked back hair, rolls his neck and gets in the game. He grins at his dorm mate, “Sure. Let’s get this party started, boys.”

A cheer goes up from the other rooms, and he feels a flush of gratification and excitement.

Harvey’s got a football scholarship on his shoulders, an outstanding GPA and every intention of partying the night away.

“Change the world today, kid?” The bouncer asks, he’s got more pins in his face than a voodoo doll but one drunk night Harvey had let loose on him and ever since he’d made it clear he liked Harvey. Harvey doesn’t know what he said exactly, but he’d been drunk and tongue loose and sometimes he thinks he should be worried about what he said because the bouncer isn’t _nice_ and he’s heard the kind of things the bouncer does when he gets the go ahead to kick someone out but he’s not worried.

“Not yet, but the nights still young, right boys?” His friends cheer and the bouncer lets their group in ahead of the queue.

There’s a guy cutting lose in the middle of the dance floor. Harvey doesn’t notice him at first, does a few shots with the others before they all break apart to enjoy the party. Harvey’s leaning back against the bar drinking a vodka tonic and letting the light buzz carry him when he does spot him. He’s got the kind of wild energy of someone about to start a fight but it’s going into the dancing instead. He’s got floppy blonde hair, a face to die for, and he moves between dance partners like he doesn’t like any of them, or he likes them _all_. Harvey doesn’t recognise him, but he’s clearly a university student, one of the rich boys going by the cut of his clothes so they’ve probably never crossed paths. Harvey finishes his drink and decides to fix that.

He moves his way through the crowd, gets into the rhythm and high fives one of his team mates as he passes. It feels nice, the rhythm, the pulse, the push-pull of a crowd that’s gone mindless and euphoric. Music blaring out the inconsistencies of the daily grind. It takes him a while, the room is big, to get up close to the blonde but once he’s there it’s worth it. Up close guy is stunning and doesn’t mind at all when Harvey gets up into his space. It’s divine and he even when the guy gets a good look at him, as much as can be under the flashing lights and hazy air, he just grins a challenge and keeps dancing.

It’s not until Harvey’s getting a bit parched that he thinks about what happens next. He’s got his fingers edged in under the guys shirt, bodies meshed together, and he doesn’t even know the guy’s name. Clubs are absolutely terrible, he reminds himself, for actually getting any sort of communication going. He waits for a lull in the music, pulls the guy in close and asks him his name.

The guy wiggles in a ‘let me go’ kind of move and Harvey wants to hold on but releases him instantly. The guy gives him a once overlooking bored and says, “No,” before he hooks his hands around someone in front of him and changes trajectory away from Harvey. Harvey’s left surprised and alone.

“Tough break.” One of the guys shouts at him as he beelines past the bar for the bathrooms.

“We did great,” He sneers at his reflection. There’s water running down his neck, cooling him off, and he feels a little angry but he’s trying to shake it out. He combs his hair back with his fingers and gets it back in order, folds back his shirt sleeves neatly and catches his own eye again. He wants to hit something, break the mirror into little shards until he can’t see himself anymore, but he grips the edge of the sink, breathes deep and tells himself that he’s better than that. He sneers at his own reflection, “Are you really?”

“Are you really what?” Someone asks behind him and he spins to snap at them because he’s clearly having a moment and instead of a stranger he finds the dance floor guy leaning back against the closed bathroom door, top of his shirt unbuttoned and looking interested. Harvey’s brain derails, and the muted sound of the music outside isn’t enough to drown out the sudden pounding of his pulse.

“Before you ask my name again,” the guy interrupts, “we’re not doing that.”

Harvey flexes his hand, “Okay.”

“What we are going to do,” the man says, and he’s smiling bright and wicked, “is have some fun.”

And Harvey, he’s down for some fun, especially when someone who looks like that is offering it.

Harvey’s half way to sleep with his door locked, when his window opens.

He knows the sound, because it’s his window, but it does not belong in the dead of night. He’s out of bed, hitting the bedside light and grabbing his chair as a weapon in a fluid roll of movement, and then he’s staring at the sheepish face of the guy from the club.

“Surprised to see me?” The guy asks.

“What do you think?” Harvey and he sets the chair back down but doesn’t let it go, fingers curled around it’s back in case.

“Well, I was in the neighbourhood.” The guy smiles like he’s cute, and he is, but Harvey’s not giving a pass to guys he slept with in a bathroom stall who climb in through his window a week later without a word between.

“Interesting you knew which window was mine.” Harvey tests, and the guy still thinks this is funny because he’s smile isn’t backing down. It’s hard to stay angry faced with that, but Harvey’s reminding himself that this isn’t normal.

“I tried a few others first, but no-one in them had your-” the blond looks him up and down and grins salaciously, “-Pyjamas.”

Harvey should be worried, the guys an unknown quantity, the guy just climbed into his second-floor bedroom window, this has stalking psychopathic loose cannon stamped all over him. But instead Harvey’s very interested and very very curious.

He stalks closer to the guy, grabs him buy his overpriced shirt and slams him up against the cupboard. He catches sight of himself in the mirror, neon striped pants and U2 tour shirt. They were a joke gift that he fell in love with, and he wears them whenever it’s late at night and the dorm is asleep. he’s got some black cotton pants for when he has to look the part.

“Don’t like them?” He asks coldly.

The guy smiles still, “I like what’s in them.”

Harvey tightens his fist, knuckles digging into the guys chest then sees the tightness around the stranger’s eyes. He breathes through it, smiles at the thrill of rattling him and takes a step back. His fist stays where it is wrapped up in soft cotton. “What’s your name, boy?”

“I said-”

Harvey cuts that off with a slight shake, it’s not impossible for the blonde to escape his hold, but the point is made and he falls quiet. “You know my name, my room, who knows what else you’ve picked up with that pretty face of yours. Fairs fair. Tit for tat.” He leans in, softer, nicer and asks, “What do I call you?” As close as he is he can see the man’s eyes blow wide, face getting that slack kind of look that thrills Harvey to the core. He waits it out, ten seconds, twenty, the snaps sharply, “Name,” and isn’t disappointed.

“Bruce.”

He lets him go, watches the way the other guy, Bruce, slumps back against the cupboard door he’d been pressed into and asks without touching, “Why are you here, Bruce?”

Bruce comes back to himself, eyes focus a little, and he his smile comes back into play. “I think you know.” He promises.

“Well I want to hear it Bruce, no misunderstandings, no going home to cry to your rich old man because you got in too deep. What do you want?”

And Bruce tells him, clearly, explicitly, eyes losing focus as he talks, losing himself to the idea of it, and Harvey? Harvey is only too happy to oblige.

Harvey wakes up to an empty room. He stares at the glass cup on his bedside table and thinks about smashing it to pieces. There’d be glass in the carpet, he’d have to clean it, he’d miss slithers, eventually he’d step on one. He knew all this, but there was a roar in his head that said, “Stupid, stupid, stupid, you scared him off again. You went too far. Stop being such a freak.” That won’t shut up and he thinks breaking the glass will snap the cord. Snip them off and the strain pushing out at his lungs will calm down and he’ll be able to breathe again.

He makes himself stand up, makes himself step away and that night when it’s still on his night stand he takes it out to the kitchen and carefully puts it at the bottom of the bin.

The second time Bruce climbs through his window Harvey can see the start of a pattern. It’s sweet and sexy and no-one would approve if they knew so he doesn’t tell anyone. Just lets Bruce in whenever he shows up, rain hail or shine, then does it all again.

Sometimes Bruce lingers, never for long, and Harvey takes the time to map out his skin and scars while he talks about joining the Gotham Police Department as a DA and he knows Bruce is coming back to himself when he starts to argue that the police are corrupt and you can do better work on the street than trapped in the system that refuses to change.

Harvey doesn’t actually believe he thinks that, because Bruce watches police chases on Harvey’s little TV with avid attention like it’s an addiction. Then when it’s over he curls around Harvey and distracts them both thoroughly.

He’s always gone in the morning but it happens so often after a while that Harvey isn’t bothered.

Harvey steps into his law lecture two months after Bruce started showing up in his room at all hours and finds the man sprawled out at the back of the hall, feet propped up on the chair in front of him.

Harvey changes course, abandons Elizabeth and Sel and takes the seat next to Bruce. Bruce gives him a look out of the corner of his eye but doesn’t do anything else.

“Put your feet down.” Harvey orders, because there is such a thing as manners, and Bruce obliges the command with a bit of a shrug, slinking further down into his seat. “This probably goes above stalking.” Harvey opens with after that, because that seems like something that should be addressed and Bruce sighs a little annoyed.

“I didn’t know this was your class.” He confesses.

“Do you want me to move?” Harvey can see his usual spot is open still and Sel keeps looking back because she’s a perpetual busybody.

“No, it’s not a problem.” Which is all Harvey needs to relax.

“Why are you here?” He ventures, “Don’t you have your own classes?” Silence stretches after the question and Harvey expects this will get the same answer all his other probing questions have gotten. He never asks him when during sex, thinks that’s unethical no matter how he’s curious but he knows Bruce would answer in those times. Which is why he’s sure it’s unethical, and that Bruce would never come back.

“I don’t really go to university.” Bruce taps at his pant leg, watching as the lecture starts. For someone who doesn’t attend he pays it a lot of attention, absorbing the information like a distracted wet sponge and Harvey’s left to grapple with that piece of the puzzle.

When the lecture ends, the Professor Jamieson looks at their corner and says, “Mr Wayne, if you will.” and Harvey’s still trying to decrypt the request when Bruce says, “Excuse me,” straightens up, steps over the chair back into the next row saunters down to the lecturer.

It takes him long enough to figure out what’s happening that Sel is up next to him bouncing on her toes and saying, “Oh my god is that Bruce Wayne?” while she stares at the front of room before he realises it. And then he looks, and yes, it’s Bruce Wayne, and he’s not sure why he hadn’t made that connection but it’s clearly Gotham’s local tragic millionaire who was on magazine covers only a few months ago for showing up at an event with a black eye. There’d been pixilated photos, but Harvey hadn’t looked. Just heard a few girls in his glass sighing over and forgotten about.

“Why not?” Harvey asks and he sounds bitter even to his own ears, so he waves Sel on and leans back, watching as Bruce hands something over to his law lecturer that looks a lot like a stuffed envelope. It disappears, but Professor Jamieson can’t help checking to see who else is still in the room and Harvey is only too happy to hold eye contact before the other man looks away.

Harvey feels satisfied with knowing the other man feels seen and waits until Bruce is almost level with him coming back up the stairs to leave before he asks, “Hey, there’s a party tonight-”

“No.” Bruce stops him, and Harvey would be a fool not to notice that Bruce had been aiming to walk right past him. “Some of us have things to do that aren’t college parties.”

And that’s that.

Harvey waits until the room is cleared out before he packs away the books he never opened and straightens his clothes out. Then he takes one step after the other, returns to his room, locks his window and reminds himself to breath.

The party the guys at the dorm drag him to is dismal.

“This party blows.” One of the guys announces when he’s made it to Harvey’s side. “I think a sorority nearby is having one of their own.” It’s all the encouragement Harvey needs to abandon his post by the snack table and get out of there.

The sorority house is overflowing, people shouting from windows, a smoke machine rumbling along and pumping out through the ground floor rooms and music so loud you can’t hear your own thoughts. Harvey is a fan and delves right on in.

He’s been there for over an hour, drinking down just enough beer to be buzzed without hitting it too hard, when he finds Bruce. He stops at the sight of the Wayne heir sprawled out on a couch one foot on the ground with a woman on his lap and another kneeling beside him mouth and hands all over him.

Harvey nearly thinks he’s unconscious, being taken advantage of in some way but Bruce’s fingers are threaded through the kneeling girl’s hair and he’s dragging her up to his mouth for languid kiss after kiss after kiss. Harvey watches as Bruce swaps his attention to the other woman dragging her down to sprawl across his chest, hands moving up below her clothes while the girl at his side laughs and joins the questing hands.

Harvey can’t look away, can’t seem to move. He _wants_ to move, but he thinks about the step after moving, about what he’ll follow it with, and there’s red, and torn hair, and thick fingers wrapping tighter and tighter- Harvey blanks. He tries again, tries to think of the next step, but he can’t, can’t break the loop. And he can’t move.

Bruce gets to his feet, doesn’t see him, tugs the girls after him and leaves. And he can’t move.

Someone bumps into him, and he snaps, punches quick and hard. He hears something break, see’s the blood spray as the guy goes down. Someone shouts. Harvey steps back. Harvey clenches his hand. Steps back again. Tucks his hands in his pockets, turns and leaves. The world feels sticky slow, the music muted, but he keeps going, tries to out walk the pounding in his chest, the beat beat beat of something crawling up the back of his neck. Creeping, threatening.

He makes it back to his dorm, locks the door, locks the window, and then he breathes.

Harvey comes to sitting cross legged on his floor with someone knocking on his door. No. Pounding.

“What?” He calls out, and there’s a pause before three people try and talk at once. Harvey feels languid and relaxed in a way he hasn’t for years. The people on the other side of his door sound dull and faded. Directly in front of him is what remains of his wall.

Someone gets his door unlocked, and the RA is the one who fumbles into his room first, and he comes in a hurry then slows. “You okay there, Dent?” He checks cautiously, and the two behind him who he vaguely recognises follow in cautiously.

“Yeah,” Harvey agrees amiably, “but I think the wall’s in a state.”

Everyone looks like puppets on a string. He thinks about how gullible they are to look away from him like that. How easy it would be to hurt them all.

“That is one hell of a hole.” The tallest guy, Denis maybe, awes, “Someone break into your room last night?”

Harvey looks at the hole, at the splintered plasterboard and he says, “I have no idea,” then barks out a quick sharp laugh before he swallows down everything else he wants to say.

He doesn’t see Bruce for another six days, and when he does it isn’t Bruce crawling in through his window, or showing up at his lectures to distract him, or even Bruce screwing around with other people. Instead he’s walking home from the library. It’s late but there’s a party in his dorm and he needed to get the references on his essay fixed up before it started to feel too late. He hears it as he walks past an alley, a sound of flesh hitting flesh and he thinks sex, then he thinks assault so he steps back to make sure everything’s okay so he can walk on in peace. He does not intend to be a voyeur.

What he sees is Bruce fighting three men, they look like they’re in some sort of gang and have been in more fights than Bruce has seen on TV. Bruce is in his finely tailored upper crust button up and slacks, but there’s blood on his mouth, and pouring from his eyebrow, and he’s grinning in a way that Harvey’s never seen. He’s alive, something crazy in his eyes, something unhinged and wild that sparks an echo in Harvey’s chest. Bruce fights with no coordination. He’s loose on his feet, tired, outmatched, but there’s a manic energy lighting him up that’s giving him the upper hand, and with every swing of his fists, ever flail of limbs and duck he’s keeping his own against the ruffians.

“Hey,” Harvey calls and starts towards the fight and he should call the police, because there’s every chance this will get ugly and he’ll find himself between these guys and Bruce, but he can’t not. All three of them look at him, but Bruce doesn’t falter, and he takes the opportunity to tackle one of them to the ground and let lose a series of blows to the guys face.

Harvey finds himself pulling Bruce of the other guy when he’d expected it to be the other way around and the three men take the opportunity to run. Bruce tries to chase them, thugs against the hold Harvey has on his shirt collar and when he realises he’s been restrained he turns on Harvey. The fist hits him across the jaw but Harvey’s been hit by bigger men, he keeps his hold on Bruce, and apparently that’s all it takes to cut the wind from his sails because Bruce stills. There’s blood on his face, his shirt is ruined, and he glares up at Harvey like Harvey’s the one who did something wrong.

“They were hassling a girl up by the bar.” He says petulantly.

“So, you thought you’d follow them into a back alley and get the stupid beat out of you?” Harvey awes.

“Someone has to tell them to stop.”

Harvey felt like he was dealing with a very young child suddenly. He wasn’t, but Bruce looked like a wet cat dragged in from the rain. “You’re a mess, Bruce.” He says plainly and Bruce flinches like Harvey struck him. “You can’t just start fights over nothing. If someone’s committed a crime that’s what the police are for.” He explains plaintively.

“They can’t be everywhere.” Bruce argues spitefully and he’s staring at the ground, Harvey’s fingers still tight in his collar and holding him there because he thinks Bruce will take off. He always does after all.

“And you can?” Harvey sneers, “You’d have to stop screwing sorority chicks if you wanted to be everywhere.”

Bruce looks up sharp and fast, and there’s panic in his expression but Harvey doesn’t care, he doesn’t care what Bruce has to say because excuses are just that.

“I’m sorry.” Bruce says helplessly as if he’s ever been helpless.

“If you weren’t interested you could have just said.” It hurts, but Harvey can be the better man, he’s sure he can. He

“It’s not you,” Bruce tells the alley floor, “I’m not interested- in anyone. Not forever.”

Harvey forces his fingers to release Bruce, but he stays there, like a marionette with is strings cut, he can’t even look at Harvey. Harvey straightens his clothes, brushes away a piece of lint that’s starting to annoy him.

“I didn’t realise we were at the forever stage.” Harvey answers, he feels cold, but he hungrily eats up the way Bruce looks when he finally looks at Harvey’s face. It’s dissolute and desperate. It doesn’t last, it never does, before Bruce digs deep and finds his fire. He glares at Harvey, blood sliding down half his face still.

“I’ve got plans,” Bruce says firmly, “and they don’t involve you.” It should hurt. And if Bruce were still kowtowed and unable to meet his eyes it would. But Bruce was always unexpected, always something more than he was letting on, and seeing that surety in him still settles a part of Harvey he hadn’t expected to be settled.

“Well I hope they don’t involve any more ridiculous fights.” Harvey says companionably, “Golden boys can’t go around punching people, someone will recognise them eventually.”

Bruce weighs Harvey’s response and the smile that follows is apologetic but not the sycophantic way he’d looked before. “You’ll be my lawyer though, right?” He says with a lilt of teasing and Harvey wants to kiss him, reel him in and never let him go. But Bruce is a step back already, light footed and unstoppable. “Right?” He grins.

“Yeah,” Harvey agrees to see the man smile again, “whatever you need Bruce. We’ll always be good friends, right?”

“Here.” Bruce fumbles with his pockets, drops a pocket knife from one, and a ring that Harvey picks up for him and returns, and while he puts both back into his pocket with his right hand he pulls out something with his left. He opens a palm sized box and pulls a large silver coin and throws the box aside. “Let’s flip for it,” he smiles, “heads and we stay friends forever.”

“And if it’s tails?”

Bruce shrugs, “The opposite.”

They flip for it.

Bruce goes off the radar a week later. Harvey see’s the news headline while he’s eating breakfast. He snatches the newspaper out of the guy next to him’s hands to get a better look at the article. But there’s nothing. No leads, no clues, just a rich boy who didn’t come home one night. Harvey follows the news like everyone else, tunes in and twists the stupid coin Bruce had insisted he keep between his fingers.

“Heads we let it go.” He tells his reflection a month later when there’s still no sign of him. He thinks Bruce planned it. Disappearing. That wherever he is it was done by choice. So he decides to flip, because why not.


End file.
